Chops

Welcome to the forum! An interesting discussion this has turned into. If it's total strangers, I won't butt into their conversation. I hear many conversations like you speak when I go out to lunch to read (several times a week). I have no interest in correcting random people. Friends and family, on the other hand, I will challenge, when they present arguments poorly grounded in reality.

The important thing is that that individual should and will be removed from society for the entirety of his existence, so that he can never do that again. If that means life in prison, or execution is irrelevant to me. Execution does have the added bonus that you can't escape after death. Practically speaking, however, he's going to get severely owned in prison, such that I'd think life in prison will be much worse than a death sentence. He's not going to survive a few years in prison anyway...I'm sure you've heard how child molesters are allegedly treated by other convicts in prison.

Bingo. It's important to remember something here, if you're of the age where you can legally move out, then your parents have no legal requirement to keep you in the house. Regardless, the cost of your room and board is undoubtedly paid for by the chores your parents make you do. That's just how it works. Once you're out of the house, then they have no more moral expectation for you to fulfill every little request of theirs. Or you could offer to pay rent in exchange for not being bugged with every little detail. When I lived with my parents, I paid for internet, and gave them a percentage of the electricity bill (worked out to about $100 a month total). If you paid for the internet, then you can let them know that the internet is yours and you'll fix it when you get to it. Just remember that a cheap apartment in a crappy area will cost you $400/month + utilities, so you need to weigh the costs against the benefit: Would you rather pay several hundred dollars a month and pay for your own food, or fix the internet a few times a month for your mom? How many hours per month do you spend fixing things at the house? Consider, even if you're spending 20 hours per month (a VERY high estimate), that works out to at least $20/hour. More likely, you're spending 4-8 hours per month fixing things, which is at least $50-100 per hour. Remember, you need to consider the complete context.

I'm getting the vibe that you think Objectivism advocates anarchism. Objectivism does not advocate anarchism, but a voluntarily funded government whose sole function is rights violations protections (Police, Courts, Military). Perhaps I'm wrong in this assessment, but I'm not finding a coherent thought process in your posts. They seem more like a stream of consciousness, rather than points that go to the heart of the issue. If you could be more specific, then you can expect more specific answers. At the very least, I'd like to recommend reading "Government Financing in a Free Society", from The Virtue of Selfishness, which would cover most of the arguments you would see here.

The Blizzard stuff posted is great. The comics xkcd, Dinosaur Comics, and Questionable Content are in cahoots.

Great essay. Paul Graham's Essays (and his book Hackers and Painters) are reliably top-notch, and usually quite inspiring (the business related ones, anyway). He seems to be musing about forum discussing more lately, most likely because of his forum Hacker News.

It was a slow process. Both becoming an atheist and telling my parents. Long after I stopped going to church, I told them "I don't know what I believe" (at the time, it was true) which was easier for them to swallow than "I don't believe in God." Eventually, I told them outright that I am an atheist. They were a little upset, but they got over it. If they are biblical literalists, then they might have a hard time ever accepting it. However, if they accept that parts of the bible are metaphorical, then you've got the crack in logic to exploit: "If you know certain parts of the bible never really happened, how do you know the rest of it did? I simply disregard the bible altogether, as it provides no real answers." It's important for you to live a moral life and to be outright about your atheism, as you can be living proof that atheists aren't all nihilistic, immoral, savages that the religionists tell themselves.

Welcome!

It's not relevant to my evaulation of South Park, but Trey and Matt have announced that the show is going to be offered online legally for free. http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article....08/03/27/175241

Same here, that final review by Ego was perfect. I also just saw it for the first time.

Given lex's statement: ...has the debate been "opened up" to the public, for conversation or does it remain a formal (read: closed) debate between Lex and Mikael?

Enjoy yourself, mate. New York is an amazing place.

It's not so much that Objectivism requires evidence for the possible to be possible. For example, it is possible that there are animals on this planet that humans have never seen (something that happens quite regularly). Objectivism makes the distinction between possible, impossible, and arbitrary. The arbitrary might exist, but without any evidence to support it, it's simply dismissed. Goblins and Witches, in their common uses, are both arbitrary AND impossible. They possess magic, magic is impossible, and so they are too. A similar argument applies to God. God is arbitrary and impossible.

None of that is coercion. Coercion requires the threat of force. Neither party are required to do anything beyond that upon which they voluntarily agree contractually. In contrast, if you were to force Microsoft to deploy it's OS under any other terms than those voluntarily agreed upon by the parties involved, then you (the forcer) would be guilty of coercion. A business has the right to sell under any terms it wishes. As a more general example, if I manufacture widgets, and you manufacture hoozits, and we agree that hoozits will be accessories designed exclusively for widgets and that my company, Widgets Inc, will agree to only approve hoozits built by your company, is anyone's rights being violated? The big question to ask in any situation such as that mentioned: Are any rights being violated? Is anyone acting under the threat of force?

Why is it being taken out of print?

I enjoyed Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace." It discusses the various theories and approaches being used to find the "theory of everything." It's an easy read, but I found it really made me think. Trying to visualize things in the same way that understanding relativity takes some digesting. Even if most of his theories turn out to be wrong, it's still a good exercise in comprehension (and I found it to be a fascinating read). You know the Thomas Edison quote: Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration Find a problem or project that intrigues you and work on it. Simply working on that will, through the constant process of thinking about it, reveal other, possibly more relevant problems. I would argue that it's more valuable to try to become an expert rather than a genius. The distinction between the two is a fine line, but expertise is usually a prerequisite of (real, practical) genius.

While not a core part of your argument, this is false. While Google popularized the "pay-per-click" scheme, there are plenty of "Pay-per-impression" schemes, and other wacky systems. For two examples: Wowhead (a popular World of Warcraft site) charges by impression, and Project Wonderful (You'll want to disable "AdBlock" to view that page, as adblock stops all the images) charges on a per-day basis, with an odd bidding system. So, some producers are paying just for exposure, without the intent of generating immediate clicks, but rather for brand recognition.

If God created existence, yet is a part of existence, that's the contradiction. God must exist outside of existence in order to create existence. He is an example of a consciousness independent of existence (primacy of existence). That is the contradiction. God is a consciousness, and all consciousness must exist within existence. This is where God violates the primacy of existence. Nothing exists outside of existence. For God to not be a contradiction, he must: 1) Follow the rules of the universe (ie, information is limited by the speed of light). Simply "Knowing" something without seeing it or having that information transmitted is not possible. 2) Have an identity: Finite size, shape. Unfortunately, God, in it's current definition (that is, in it's lack of a definition) does not fit any of those. God is considered* to be outside the realm of existence, "infinite" in size scope and power (which makes no sense since infinity is another non-existent). So God, aside from being an arbitrary assertion (being unverifiable and unprovable), is ultimately a contradiction of reality, in that it requires the assertion that some consciousness can exist independent of reality. Existence exists first. Consciousnesses must exist within existence. * I use the word "considered" because there is no valid definition of God. This is because definitions require concepts, which ultimately require perception (a concept which does not hierarchically terminate at perceived reality is not a valid concept).

Google products are amazing. Google's politics are nothing short of bankrupt. I've felt this way ever since Google came out as a major supporter of Net Neutrality.

There's a book called "Introduction to Objectivist Metaphysics" or are you confusing it with ITOE. I would like to put in my 2 cents and say that ITOE is fundamental, but OPAR does a good job of completely summarizing the philosophy in a single tome.

HP11, any reason you quoted your whole post without any other comments?

Google produces as much as any data miner or data analyist. It produces reports and a means of (very) quickly extracting data from a massive set of data. By that standard, there is no market for any analysis of data, because that analysis is "nothing." False. Google respects the robots.txt standard. Your Google article is completely worthless. It says nothing about Google doing ANYTHING wrong, other than that it concluding Google is evil, grounding its argument in "what-ifs" rather than "what-is" (ie, reality)

Your entire post is one long piece of non-content. You've effectively said nothing. It's one giant appeal to emotion: "Microsoft used it's power to crush the competition. Others were harmed" (without showing HOW anyone was actually HARMED), and contains in it the implication that a small company can forcibly demand that larger companies try not to compete. Let's hear it then. How would Google have NOT started succeeded without Microsoft antitrust convictions? Consider, Google didn't (and still doesn't) advertise, and was started in 1998, and survived both Netscape getting crushed and Firefox's emergence. Additionally, Google piggybacked off Yahoo early. Nowhere in there is Microsoft even a consideration. Your post, as it stands, completely ignores both Kendall's and my posts, and just turns on the emotional anti-conceptual emotional appeal. I request that you do the following: 1) Demonstrate how Microsoft did harm. Real harm. Not this "they did better than us, therefore harmed us" 2) Explain what right does a company have to force the competition to not compete. 3) Define the difference between competitive and anti-competitive practices (defining both concepts) 4) As a follow-up to (3), define why competitive practices are good, while anti-competitive practices are bad. Edit: Typos and brief clarifications.

And, of course, this attempt to be competitive in the search engine market is obviously worthy of a congressional inquiry. This oughtta be fun. Even with them both they wouldn't be able to compete with Google.

As far as I'm concerned, Amazon is the only bookstore worth purchasing from. Which, of course, means they're probably doing anti-competitive practices like selling artificially lower than others until those others go out of business so they can sell for ridiculously high prices without any competition. Then knowledge would be too expensive for anyone but the richest in the world. They should be proactively shut down.